Australia discussed 'UFO collection planning' with US in secret meeting

The meeting was held at the Pentagon in May 2023 and involved the so-called Five Eyes - US, Australia, Canada, UK, New Zealand - to brief the alliance about UAPs, the modern term for UFOs.

The Australian Defence Force previously denied attending the briefing, however the agenda released by the US government shows the Five Eyes alliance met for a "caucus working group" to "cultivate shared awareness of allies' UAP issues, detection, and mitigation activities and challenges".

The allies discussed the need for "networks to share Five Eyes UAP reporting", including documents marked "top secret" and "special intelligence".

"The intention is to develop a framework for future UAP collaboration," one document said.

The document also highlighted the need to share databases "showing known objects using various sensors".

It's unclear if the "UAP collection planning" discussion was related to the collection of data or crashed craft.

It should be noted the term UAP can apply to objects such as drones or the Chinese surveillance balloon, which caused an international incident when it flew over the US and Canada, and was subsequently shot down, in early 2023.

In November, it was reported a wing of the CIA - the Office of Global Access - coordinated the retrieval of crashed UAPs around the world.

The briefing flagged sharing "Talent Keyhole" data, which is among the USA's most highly-classified data and refers to the information collected by satellites, spy planes and other sensor data.

Each country, including Australia, presented their allies with an update on their latest internal UAP information.

The meeting closed with a conversation about the future UAP meeting scheduling, along with talks about what other Five Eye forums the issue could be tied into, such as "emerging and disruptive technologies".

The Australian Defence Force has refused to officially acknowledge any interest in the subject, and says it does not collect UAP reports, as "there was no scientific or other compelling reason to continue to devote resources to the recording and investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena".

ACM, publisher of this masthead, asked Defence Minister Richard Marles if Australia had discussed sharing UAP data and reports, or a UAP collaboration plan with its allies.

However, Mr Marles declined to respond to questions. Instead, the Department of Defence pointed to the Australian representative attending the Five Eyes meeting.

Last year, the Department of Defence denied attending the Five Eyes UAP briefing multiple times, including in a response to a question on notice by Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson in the May Senate estimates

Defence later admitted Australia did send a representative.

At the time, the Department of Defence refused to answer questions or explain its about-face, despite concerns the organisation misled Senators.

Internal talking points prepared the day after the The Canberra Times' story (February 11), and secured under freedom of information, reveal Defence was unaware it had a representative at the Five Eyes briefing when responding to questions and FOI requests.

"On 2 November 2023, Senator [Peter] Whish-Wilson submitted a question on notice asking whether Defence attended the UAP Forum ... in responding to this QoN, Defence identified a Defence representative from the Australian Embassy in Washington had attended the UAP Forum," the memo stated.

It's also understood the representative was from one of Australia's intelligence agencies.

An FOI request relating to the Washington representative was refused under Section 7(2A), which states intelligence agencies are exempt from the FOI Act.

Briefing notes prepared for Air Marshal Robert Chipman and Defence Chief Science Professor Tanya Monro state "the United States has shared intelligence on UAP".

"Defence will continue to monitor and engage with the [All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office] on UAP, especially if they are deemed to be a security or safety threat," the document stated.

The FOI dossier also revealed the Australian Space Agency requested information from the Defence Space Command to prepare a brief on "unidentified aerial phenomenon".

The Canberra Times asked ASA who the brief was prepared for, if it was internal or for a minister, to what extent the ASA leadership had been brief on UAPs and if the organisation had engaged with NASA on the topic of UAPs.

However, ASA refused to respond to questions.

"The Australian Space Agency does not comment on internal briefings," a spokesperson said.